Now he looks in my direction. “No. Not kidding.” After a few more steps, his gaze locks on the horizon and he says, “You asked me why I thought we belonged together.”
“Yeah, and I think your answer was something like I’d be a good bang.”
If looks could burn, I’d be crispy. “You told me you thought I was living in the past, that my attraction to you wasn’t real, but based on how I remembered you as a kid.”
“It has to be. We haven’t spent enough time together as adults.”
“Thing is, it’s both.”
I glance in his direction, but his eyes are pinned to the horizon. “The day you met me, when we were both six, I was crying. I told you before that I didn’t remember why, but I do.”
I knew it!
“My mother forgot me.”
I wince at the undercurrent of emotion in his voice, even though I’d suspected this piece of information based on what Mom had remembered.
“My father worked constantly, and my mother stayed home. She didn’t have anywhere to be or anything to do. We had a housekeeper, a butler, a cook…” He scratched the back of his head. “The only thing she had to do was care for my sister and pick me up from school. She forgot. I stood outside Bailiwick’s and watched all our classmates meet their parents and walk away, one after another, until I was alone. That’s when I’d gone into the woods.”
“That’s horrible, Seven. But how could she forget you? Wouldn’t your luck make sure she remembered?”
He snorted. “It should have. But the thing about a leprechaun’s luck is it’s directed based on our will, and another leprechaun’s will and luck can counteract it.”
I feel breathless as understanding bridges the space between us. A heavy weight forms in my chest. “Your mom didn’t want to remember. She left you on purpose.”
He gives a solid nod. “When I was older, I realized that she’d wanted me to have to ask the headmistress to call my father. She abandoned me to get my father’s attention. That never happened because you came. Your family was warm and kind to me. She always hated that. Cursed about it after your mom dropped me home.”
I catch myself grinding my teeth. Seven’s family situation is seriously fucked up. What type of mother tries to use their six-year-old as a pawn? A vision of Seven as a child fills my mind, and tears prick my eyes. All that luck, all that wealth, and his family situation was a steaming pile of bear dung.
“I’m so sorry, Seven. You were a child, and you deserved better.”
He grins and focuses that brilliant green gaze on me. “I want to be with you, Sophia, because when I look at you, I not only see the little girl who was there for me that day, but I see a woman who uprooted her entire life for the sake of her daughter. You would never forget Arden. And more, you don’t give a fuck about fae society. You are your own person. Being with you is a total escape from the constant pressure to be on all the time. You can’t imagine how appealing that is to me.”
I open my mouth to respond, but I’m completely speechless. My inner warrior is gone, and in her place is a warm, gooey heart-shaped pat of butter that slides over my rib cage and drops, sizzling, into my lower abdomen. I trudge toward the mountains, my memories and emotions forming a huge knot that I can’t untangle.
In some ways, I wish Seven was a pixie and that I’d planted the seeds of humiliation, grief, and betrayal I’d coughed up the night of the ball. The physical manifestation of my emotions would have been a brutal thing, a dark tangle of thorns to rival my parents’ feelings about me. But had I planted them, and had they grown in my parents’ garden, I could have managed them now. The seeds of Seven’s apology and explanation, if he were able to produce them, would choke it out. And I would know—definitively know—exactly how he felt and how strongly. I’d be able toseeit.
But he’s not a pixie, and his feelings will never take physical form like mine. Which means I have to trust what he says is true. I have to trust him. And that’s a tall order for a poker player like me who’s always prepared for a bluff. A woman like me who knows the sting of betrayal. It’s all made more complicated by the societal pressures, including his father’s control, that keep us from being together publicly. A secret relationship means no stakes and no accountability to anyone but each other. There’s so much that bothers me about that.
The benefit of all this rumination is that it’s distracted me from the walking we’re doing. By the time I think about how far we’ve traveled, we are closing in on the sunny wood at the base of the mountain. I haven’t felt the distance at all. It’s as if my agitation has its own wings.
“You’re awfully quiet over there,” he finally says. “Have you sworn off speaking to me now?”
“I’m not sure what to say. You’re right, I’d never forget my child. But I don’t think you should romanticize what I did. There were days I regretted it. In some ways, I think, had I known what I was in for, I would have found another way.”
His shoulders sag. “Tell me what it was like for you after you left… out there.”
“You’ve been beyond Devashire. You know what it’s like.”
“For business. That was temporary and sanctioned. Not like what you did.”
I don’t want to tell him. It’s not pretty. I hook my thumbs in the straps of my backpack and heave a sigh. “I don’t think you really want to know.”
“Try me.”
I haven’t told anyone this story, not even Arden. By the time she was old enough to understand our surroundings, I’d done what I’d had to do to make us a home.
“I’ll start you off. When I went looking for you, I learned that you disguised yourself as a Ms. Effie Conrad. You used your luck to temporarily trap the real Effie in her hotel room by making the bathroom door handle break off in her hand. Then you used illusion to make yourself look like her, stole her passport, and boarded a bus to Tennessee. That’s when you dropped off the face of the earth as far as I could tell.”
